Tuesday, 27 May 2014

Fun With Dubs - Bastard Electrics

My Bay is a bit of `special' - Audi 80 watercooled engine shoe horned into the engine bay. Of course, cooling this needs a radiator, so theres a huge BMW radiator and two cooling fans, one on each side of the rad.

In case you've forgotten what it looks like:-

Now as the electrics were put together by a colour blind fuck wit, some of them don't work, and tracing the wires is a pain where red turns to blue turns to brown within the first metre of wiring.

So I'm gradually working my way through the systems and fixing connections and making things work. Recent successes include reversing lights which had a lot more chance of working once the switch was actually connected to the battery and the lights themselves.

This afternoon I was looking at radiator fans. The one behind the rad works off a manual switch in the cab and also a thermo switch. After figuring out what does what it seems to be OK. But the rad on the engine side was kaput. 12V made their presence known but no turny fan.

Nothing left to do but take it to bits:-

Of course the first thing I did was lose one of the tiny nuts that hold the motor case together. I still haven't found it. Stripping the motor revealed no damage so I gave it a good hose out with electrical cleaner, reassembled and put 12V on it from a spare battery. Success. I now have a working fan (with only three casing screws...).

Next its find out why one of the relays under the dashboard is consuming power, and then its time to weld the chassis (and probably burn the fucker to the ground).